In February 2016 I responded to that year’s Black History Month in a semi-ironic fashion, with the post RACIAL OTHER MYTHCOMICS MONTH, wherein I devoted four mythcomics posts to any sort of racial myths that involved non-white characters. I don’t entirely dismiss the desire of non-white peoples to venerate figures who made significant contributions to society, or even the desire of white people to feel good for knowing about such contributions. (I still remember being a grade-school white liberal, congratulating myself because I’d read a book about the accomplishments of George Washington Carver.) The problem with fetishizing contributions because they came from people of color is that in the nineties the liberal rationale shifted from “we’re all in it together” to “it’s all us marginalized peoples against straight white men.” Putting aside the obvious fact that often the various “colors” within each of these Rainbow Coalitions don’t blend as well as the ideologues claim, this attitude would diminish the accomplishments of a George Carver if one invalidates the history of Western science as the creation of evil white men.
I said “would diminish” because for the most part attacks on the idea of science have remained on the fringes of the political system, unlike, say, almost every other fringe-idea championed by the Left. Attacks on history and literature, however, are far more in vogue. I’ve already noted the insipidity of the 1619 Project and of the attempt to “cancel”dead actors associated with the film BIRTH OF A NATION. But in recent weeks the "corpse-fighters"—I call them that because they show their great courage by fighting dead people—have taken Western society’s Biggest Dead Literary Guy, the Bard of Horrible Racism and Sexism. A librarian, Amanda McGregor, wrote:
“Shakespeare’s works are full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism, and misogynoir,” MacGregor wrote, with the final word meaning misogyny aimed at black women.
Granted, I haven’t read the whole essay. But it does seem problematic to say that Shakespeare gave offense to Black women, given that there are none in his plays (except maybe in the minds of ideologues who imagine Cleopatra as a Nubian Soul Sister). Possibly the Bard sinned against Black women simply by not even mentioning them, in the same way another ideologue claimed that William Moulton Marston sinned by setting a Wonder Womanstory in Africa and simply not showing any tribal women.
What the ultraliberals seem to desire from Shakespeare are rah-rah moments for marginalized peoples, roughly on the same level as all the rah-rah trivia one sees in any Marginalized Peoples’ Month. Ideologues are enraged that the Bard would dare to portray a Powerful Black Man like Othello as being in any way fallible. To ideologues, only one fallibility is permissible: a person of color may be fairly upbraided for being too “white,” though he or she can find redemption by casting off the poison of whiteness and wreaking indiscriminate violence. (See my review for the pestilential film US.) I wonder if any of these raving goofballs are even aware of TITUS ANDRONICUS, in which the Bard of Hideous Racism gave us the character of Aaron the Moor, who, for all of his moral failings, provides Western literature with its first three-dimensional black character. But, hey, Aaron’s a supporting character, so he’s the equivalent of the black guy who always gets killed in the horror movie. (Sarcasm alert.) So all these inequities will be solved once we boot out Shakespeare and study the deep subtleties of a diverse author like Ishmael Reed. (Quadruple sarcasm alert.)
In the final analysis, the Left’s tendency to take an oppositional stance in their celebrations—Accomplishment X is wonderful because it was accomplished against the background of an evil white male hegemony— serves to generate nothing more clickbait journalism. In terms of developing a more diverse culture, it’s the equivalent of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
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